 is Fox 26 Morning News at 9 a.m. connected to you. Melissa is live in the Medical Center right now and she's bringing us reports from one of the pioneers of Texas medicine and we want to check in with her. Melissa. We are celebrating the hard-to-day mic. That is because St. Luke's is now celebrating 30 years of their transplant program. I have a patient here who had a transplant 22 years ago when you barely even heard about transplants plus one of the pioneers right here in our Medical Center. It's an exciting story I can't wait to share with you. I am so excited to be here in the Texas Medical Center this morning because something big here is happening. In fact we are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the the heart transplant program here at the Texas Heart Institute Hospital. This dates back all the way back to Dr. Denton Cooley who has really become a household name. I'm sure you've heard of Dr. Cooley. He's a legend in the world of medicine. It goes back to 1968 when he performed the first human heart transplant right here in our country and the first implantation of a total artificial heart. This was a huge deal that has ended up saving thousands of lives. His legacy also includes the founding of the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal where we are today. As I said it's celebrating 30 years of life-saving surgeries. At 91 Dr. Cooley is no longer in the operating room but one of the surgeons is certainly taking up where he left off and I'm going to be talking to him in just a bit. But first I have a special patient with us today who knows all too well what a heart transplant means. That's because he underwent one 22 years ago. Please welcome Randy Creech with us this morning. Good morning to you. 22 years ago you had to face the news that you had to have a heart or you wouldn't make it. Let's go back to what happened and why you had to have a heart transplant. Well back when I turned 40 things really do sometimes go south. In a normal physical find out I had a little problem and testing showed later that actually had a viral infection in the heart muscle and began to cause congestive heart failure and some irregular arrhythmias and it deteriorated into the point where transplant was the only option to save my life. When you think of a virus you certainly don't think that that could ever lead to a heart transplant but you did it and when we take a look back here at this heart and you see how complicated it is can you believe that they were able to pull that off and save your life and you've gotten 22 years and and hopefully decades to go. Every day it's still a miracle to me but the real miracle is that a family somewhere would love others enough to share the gift of life and that the technology and the medicines advance to the point where we can lead in many cases you know normal lifestyles and enjoy years of life after a transplant. We are here in the museum at St. Luke's where they have all this history of how far heart transplants have come and it is truly incredible. Now you have spent these last few decades helping others going through the same thing you drive in every single day or every single week to this hospital to help people going through the same thing can you believe how far it's come? We apologize for those technical difficulties Melissa will try to get that signal back up and we'll check back with her in a little bit. I'm live again with Randy Creech a wonderful man who has survived and lived 22 years we give a heart transplant thanks for sticking around with us I'm sorry we lost you just a moment ago because we were getting to an intriguing part where we were talking about you found out who you're who the person was who donated the heart to you a 19-year-old young man who was the same age as your son at the time and very emotional for you and certainly for his family as well but you got to meet them. Yes I did and it was a great experience someone asked me to describe the emotions I guess probably my best description would be it's like the saddest you've ever been because you've met someone that lost someone they really really loved but the happiest to to be able to at least attempt to thank someone for saving your life which is an incredible gift. And the young man's dad embraced you and you know that he probably was hoping to fill the beating heart of his son that his son lived through you again. Yep I just feel I have an obligation to you know to that family to to take care of myself and to take care of the gift that they gave me and God's blessed me with all these years and you know how many more I'll have I don't know but I am really thankful for each day and very very thankful to that family. I think it's a real wake-up call when we hear stories like this that that family gets to have a part of their son still alive because there are very few donors when you really think about how many people are in need of a heart and other organs right now. There about a hundred and fourteen thousand people in the United States waiting for life-saving transplants of some particular organ each day 18 people will die because there's not enough donors so that's why I share the news about you know registering to be a donor and thinking about giving life to others because incredible gift obviously. It's so amazing to be here in this museum and see how far it's come and we're going to be talking to the doctor in just a little while who is one of the pioneers here who has seen it come from from the very humble beginnings to how far it's come today to save people like Randy. Randy thank you for being here today. It's an honor to talk to you I'm so proud and so happy for you and your family that you've gotten all this extra time to live. Yep I'm certainly gonna enjoy them and hopefully I'll have more but who knows but that's the promise and that's the hope. I'll make God bless every one of your days thanks for talking to us and again we'll have that doctor coming up to you. Welcome back everyone I'm live at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital this morning with they are celebrating 30 years of their heart transplant program and right now I'm joined by one of the pioneers here at this hospital we're talking about Dr. Oh H. Frazier better known as Dr. Bud Frazier good morning to you. Good morning. What an honor to be with you today we take a look at the history here in the museum at St. Luke's of how far we've gone and your research helped lead to these heart pumps so we're talking about just a completely different step even than a heart transplant. Well I've been working on these pumps since I was a medical student we've made a lot of advances in the field since then and they've already been here at the at the Heart Institute. This is the first continuous flow pump that we implanted in the early 80s and that's a very good pump and it was worked experimentally. These pumps actually have gone on to become very small and they're very effective and they generally have been much more widely used than a heart transplant which is always dependent on a donor. Unfortunately we always have to depend on someone else's misfortune in order to help these poor patients. These pumps help us a lot in that. In your career you have been able to pull off so much including the first transplant of a child with what was it like to be able to pull that off and save a child? Well I think we just do what we we address the problems as they come up you know we have a dying child you do what you can and it was a very gratifying experience but of course the child died after ten years and that's what we've got to do we got to improve the longevity of these patients so they can live a normal lifespan and currently we can't do that. Everything I read about you shows that you're quite the humble man considering you've saved thousands of lives. Any idea how many about how many heart transplants you've done? Well I've done about a thousand but it's still you know there's still a lot of patients. The thing about medicine is very humbling you know we've lost two patients this week that we could have saved if we'd had a had a good total heart replacement. You've made a huge difference here in our community and it's such an honor to have you here in the Texas Medical Center and I understand that in school you will thought about being a lawyer and your mom said when you decided to go on to being a doctor that I don't think you'll make a very good doctor is that true and I guess you heard her wrong. I didn't hunt you know I wouldn't she thought I would be better if I could like to hunt and I said you know mother I don't like to kill things and she said and I don't think you need to be to kill things to be a good doctor and her response was well I don't know but it might help I as I grew older I realized what she was talking about but but it is very gratifying to have been able to make these contributions in our Medical Center. I think our Medical Center is probably not appreciated as much by the people even in Houston the largest Medical Center in the world. Well Dr. Frazier thanks for talking to us this morning I know you're a busy man and you've got to probably get back to the operating room great to talk to you this morning. Thank you very much. We'll be right back.